IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uww/wpaper/06-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Committee Size and Smart Growth: An Optimal Solution

Author

Listed:
  • Heather Kohls

    (Marquette University)

  • Russell Kashian

    (Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin - Whitewater)

Abstract

A critical challenge of Wisconsin’s Smart Growth Initiative is to include the public in the creation and development of the instrument. One implication of public participation is the strategic development of a comprehensive planning committee. Two crucial decisions occur when the committee is formed: the size of the committee and the composition of the committee. This paper models a relation between committee size and the accuracy of policy. It also models the relationship between the inclusion of experts, whether paid consultants or paid planners, on the accuracy of the outcome. Based on a survey of 144 committee members, we test the relationship between the participants’ observations of quality and group size and composition. This paper looks at the tradeoff between the delay of reaching a group decision with the additional accuracy offered by the large, diverse committee.

Suggested Citation

  • Heather Kohls & Russell Kashian, 2006. "Committee Size and Smart Growth: An Optimal Solution," Working Papers 06-03, UW-Whitewater, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:uww:wpaper:06-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.uww.edu/documents/colleges/cobe/economics/wpapers/06_03_kohls_kashian.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Karen Bickerstaff & Gordon Walker, 2001. "Participatory Local Governance and Transport Planning," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 33(3), pages 431-451, March.
    2. Clare Lombardelli & James Proudman & James Talbot, 2005. "Committees Versus Individuals: An Experimental Analysis of Monetary Policy Decision-Making," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 1(1), May.
    3. Nicola Persico, 2004. "Committee Design with Endogenous Information," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(1), pages 165-191.
    4. Patsy Healey & Richard Williams, 1993. "European Urban Planning Systems: Diversity and Convergence," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 30(4-5), pages 701-720, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gerlach-Kristen, Petra, 2006. "Monetary policy committees and interest rate setting," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 487-507, February.
    2. Amihai Glazer, 2006. "Predicting Committee Action," Working Papers 050621, University of California-Irvine, Department of Economics.
    3. Gerring, John & Thacker, Strom C. & Lu, Yuan & Huang, Wei, 2015. "Does Diversity Impair Human Development? A Multi-Level Test of the Diversity Debit Hypothesis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 166-188.
    4. Bhattacharya, Sourav & Duffy, John & Kim, Sun-Tak, 2014. "Compulsory versus voluntary voting: An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 111-131.
    5. Camille Cornand & Frank Heinemann, 2015. "Macro-expérimentation autour des fonctions des banques centrales," Revue française d'économie, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(2), pages 3-47.
    6. Stephen Hansen & Michael McMahon & Andrea Prat, 2018. "Transparency and Deliberation Within the FOMC: A Computational Linguistics Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(2), pages 801-870.
    7. Quement, Mark T. Le & Marcin, Isabel, 2020. "Communication and voting in heterogeneous committees: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 449-468.
    8. Chakravarty, Surajeet & Kaplan, Todd R. & Myles, Gareth, 2018. "When costly voting is beneficial," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 33-42.
    9. Larionov, Daniil & Pham, Hien & Yamashita, Takuro & Zhu, Shuguang, 2021. "First Best Implementation with Costly Information Acquisition," TSE Working Papers 21-1261, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Apr 2022.
    10. Baethge, Caroline, 2016. "Performance in the beauty contest: How strategic discussion enhances team reasoning," Passauer Diskussionspapiere, Betriebswirtschaftliche Reihe B-17-16, University of Passau, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    11. Alexander Walter & Roland Scholz, 2007. "Critical success conditions of collaborative methods: a comparative evaluation of transport planning projects," Transportation, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 195-212, March.
    12. Ana Lasaosa, 2007. "Learning the Rules of the New Game? Comparing the Reactions in Financial Markets to Announcements before and after the Bank of England's Operational Independence," Ekonomia, Cyprus Economic Society and University of Cyprus, vol. 10(1), pages 18-41, Summer.
    13. Alan S. Blinder, 2009. "Making Monetary Policy by Committee," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(2), pages 171-194, August.
    14. Xin Zhao, 2018. "Heterogeneity and Unanimity: Optimal Committees with Information Acquisition," Working Paper Series 52, Economics Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney.
    15. de Clippel, Geoffroy & Eliaz, Kfir, 2015. "Premise-based versus outcome-based information aggregation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 34-42.
    16. Jan Marc Berk & Beata K. Bierut, 2005. "Communication in Monetary Policy Committees," DNB Working Papers 059, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    17. Mike Felgenhauer & Hans Grüner, 2007. "Distortionary lobbying," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 8(3), pages 181-195, May.
    18. Nicolas GAVOILLE & Jean-Michel JOSSELIN & Fabio PADOVANO, 2014. "What do you know about your mayor? Voters’ information and jurisdiction size," Economics Working Paper from Condorcet Center for political Economy at CREM-CNRS 2014-01-ccr, Condorcet Center for political Economy, revised Aug 2015.
    19. Paolo Balduzzi & Clara Graziano & Annalisa Luporini, 2014. "Voting in small committees," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 111(1), pages 69-95, February.
    20. John Duffy & Sourav Bhattacharya & Sun-Tak Kim, 2012. "Compulsory versus Voluntary Voting: An Experimental Study," Working Paper 492, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Aug 2013.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:uww:wpaper:06-03. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Yamin Ahmad (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eduwwus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.